Friday Report: A growing concern

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The nation has become so fat that no actual sunlight hits American soil anymore. We’re fatter now than anytime since 1903 when 335-pound president Howard Taft got stuck in a bathtub. Two-thirds of us are either overweight or obese with a body-mass index resembling a golf score. Six generations ago, we consumed five pounds of sugar over the course of a year. Today, in that same timeframe, we shovel down more than 80 pounds. That’s over 20 teaspoons of sugar daily for each and every one of us.

The other thing that happened over that same six generations was that we sold all our horses and started travelling around in Pintos, Mustangs and Broncos. Work changed from sunup-to-sundown to 6-foot cubicles.

The AMA just announced that obesity is a disease. Oddly enough, they admit that it’s a disease you have and still be healthy. Despite that, for $25,000 you can have those same doctors open you like a pocketbook and staple your stomach shut.

My diet plan was to eat a bunch of dinosaur eggs, those little foam-rubber critters that swell up 30 times size, thinking that would provide a satisfied, full feeling, but somebody beat me to it. There’s a product out there called Bystrictin, which is pretty much chocolate and vanilla-colored hay. When it hits the stomach, it does just what the dinosaurs would do. Bystrictin sternly warns you that three people out of every 1,000 will die within 90 days of having their stomach stapled.

Best to just cut back on eating. Get a plan. Get a regimen. Get a (gulp) diet.

Certainly the strictest diet would be the Breatharian Diet where you simply stop eating and drinking. Then you begin to enjoy a healthy life absorbing nothing but good thoughts and sunlight. Wiley Brooks, founder of the Breatharian Institute of America said he lived a life without food or water. His claim of fasting for decades was disputed by a photo of him leaving a Los Angeles 7/11 with a Slurpee, a hot dog and a package of Twinkies. Nonetheless for $100,000, at his Institute you can be taught to live on love and sunshine. Incidentally, the full and healthy life Brooks promises has a warranty of about four days.

Not all diets have been started for weight loss. Sylvester Graham, back in the 1820s, was a wild-eyed Presbyterian minister preaching the value of vegetables. He ranted about the evils of white bread and strongly opposed the slaughter of animals for consumption. He was so strident in his cause that he was periodically forced to hide from angry mobs of butchers and bakers. In a sense, he was way ahead of his time, but in a truer sense he was a raving loony because he promoted his diet, not for health or weight control but because he believed that lust and sexual urges were rooted in the consumption of red meat. A vegetarian diet could curb sexual behavior and prevent men from indulgent activities leading to insanity, blindness and a grin that lasted longer than four hours.

I don’t know if this is relative to his beliefs, but Sylvester was one of 17 children. We remember him today as the inventor of Graham Crackers which he developed as an aid to abstinence. Remember that when you’re snuggling by the fire, noshing on S’mores.

Elvis Presley popularized the Sleeping Beauty Diet back when his girth began being measured in cubits. For about $8,000 bucks a day, you simply remain totally sedated on an 600 calorie intravenous diet until you achieve your desired weight goal. At that point you’re resuscitated, dressed, and put back up on stage or herded back to your cubicle, whatever.

A bum stops a lady entering Bergdorf’s, “Look lady, I ain’t eaten in three days.”